Welcome to GuruNews
Brought to you each week by the PC Gurus, a loose collection of volunteers from around the Kentuckiana region.
You can interact with the PC Guru team via our Web site, located at http://www.thepcgurus.com. On our site you can post your computer questions, comments and rants on the forums, e-mail the PC Guru
team members and chat one on one in our nightly IRC chat beginning around 8:00 PM EST. You can also subscribe to our RSS feeds so you can get the latest news and forum updates from the PC Guru Web site directly on your computer.
If you're new to the Newsletter you can read back issues at Team member JP Durbin's website at http://www.jpdurbin.net. There are links to all the old 84 Online issues as well as the new GuruNews missives.
The WHAS Crusade for Children provides year round support for needy children throughout the Kentuckiana region. Visit http://www.whascrusade.org to make donations online.
Those of you Jonesing for the halcyon days of 84 Online might find team member USS Rover’s list of streaming tech shows at http://www.kalnet.com/%7Eussrover/c-shows.html useful. Times are listed in Zulu (GMT) and Central.
To subscribe to this newsletter just drop by www.thepcgurus.com and sign up!
Vol. 6, No. 38
9-14-06
1 Email questions
2 Tech wars
3 Apple previews, TiVo Hi-Def, Universal vs. most popular websites
4 Message search tool
5 CMOS battery woes
Since the very first issue we’ve included an email question and answer in the weekly newsletter, usually one that can be easily answered in a single response.
Many of the questions that we receive relate to settings, specific file names or errors and software/hardware recommendations and are easy to take care of in one email, but many others are more complex and require more information, extensive research or even personal intervention.
This week I thought I’d share such an exchange to give the readers a better idea of what we do and the dedication that the team members have for our “mission”.
Q: I recently retired and have wanted to pick up where I left off in '95 with genealogy work. My current hp pavilion running on xp will not run the old program disks with update disks being added. When I go back to some of the original disks, I am missing one..Commsoft Roots III Auxiliary Diskette version 3.01 on the small floppy disk. I do have this on the 5 1/2 floppy disk. I can not find anyone with the old hardware to run the 5 1/2 floppy to copy onto the small floppy. Any ideas where I can find this old hardware just to make a copy in the Mt. Washington, KY(where I live) or Louisville, KY area?
A: If you just type 5 1/4 floppy into a google search, you should come up with a match that indicates that someone is selling a drive on ebay for less than $5. If you just want the info copied off the floppy, let me know at the following email address and I'll send you my address so you can mail the floppy to me and I'll copy it and email you the file which you can download to other media.
Q: I just want the copy. Please send me your address so that I can send the disk to you! Thanks. If this doesn't work, I will have to re-type all of my files.
A: By the way, be sure to include your return address or I can attach the files to an email.
Q: I plan to put it in the mail on Thursday as I leave the area to visit family out of town! Thanks again.
A: I will put the 3 1/2" floppy disk, the original 5 1/4" and the cd in the mail sometime on Sunday. I had no problem copying the files to the 3 1/2 and the cd. I have included a printed dump of the file lists on both the floppy & the cd. There are 29 files totaling 123,373 bytes. I am also attaching zipped version of the files to this email - it only takes up 71k so if you're were worrying about download time, it shouldn't take long, even using dial-up access. Hope this solves your problem.
Sincerely,
Carmine
Final: Thanks for your assistance! I returned home yesterday, picked up my mail and there were the disks. I have used the small floppy and it works like it should have.
Thanks again!
While it’s unusual to involve us shipping items or even making personal visits, it’s very common for an email thread to take several messages to settle an issue. This is both a more in depth illustration of our operation and an attaboy to Carmine for his actions on behalf of our readers.
Thanks Carmine, we all appreciate your efforts :)
Kevin Mefford, Editor
Terry Wise
Tech News of the Week
Apple unveiled
a host of new and re-vamped products this week and gave
fans a preview of the
company's upcoming set top box:
http://news.com.com/Apple+Its+showtime/2009-1041_3-6114799.html?tag=nefd.pop
TIVO
enters the world of Hi-Def with it's Series 3 box, but at a steep
price:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/edwardbaig/2006-09-13-tivo-hd_x.htm
Universal
Music Group is turning its attention to MySpace and YouTube,
two services
which they say are hosting their copyrighted products
illegally:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060914-7744.html
Copy
us on the good stuff---as long as it's in the public domain
;-)
Matthew
Dattilo
thepcgurus@gmail.com
www.mattstodayinhistory.com
Download of the Week
Need a way to drill deeply into Outlook and find messages you know are around but can't find? Use Lookout, a freebie from, of all companies, Microsoft.
Unlike separate search tools, such as Google Desktop, Lookout's quicker to access because it becomes part of Outlook's toolbar. Besides e-mail, the tool adds attachments, PDF contents, and folders on an IMAP server into its index.
Lookout also searches inside appointments and contacts (and you'll probably discover new connections between message topics and contacts). It works with all current versions of Outlook.
This tool requires Microsoft's .NET application be installed, too. Get them here: http://www.lookoutsoft.com/Lookout/download.html.
Art Maley
Email Question of the Week
Q: I have a new Dell XPS 400 tower. At
startup I consistently receive a
message of "system battery low. Press F1 to
continue or F2 for setup".
Dell cannot solve the problem as their suggestion
is to plug the PC
directly into a wall outlet instead of a surge protector
and this will
go away. It doesn't happen. Any suggestions? P.S. Unit is 8
months
old.
A: I would try replacing the battery
(probably a CR2032) before I did
anything else. They're inexpensive and
available at any decent local
computer shop, Wal-Mart or Radio
Shack.
I would only suggest plugging directly to the wall outlet
for
troubleshooting, NOT as a permanent solution. If that had fixed
the
problem you should have replaced the surge protector, but of
course
that's moot at this point.
Hope that helps and keep us
posted...
Kevin Mefford
pcguru@microdome.net
Contact info and legal
stuff
If you have tech support
questions or ideas and/or submissions for our newsletter please submit them by
visiting www.thepcgurus.com and click
on the “Email the Team” icon.
Copyright 2001-2006 The PC
Gurus, all rights reserved.
Publication, rebroadcast or storage is prohibited without prior consent,
however you may freely forward this publication to friends as long as A) it is
forwarded in its entirety and B) no fee is charged.
Information provided in this
publication is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind, either expressed
or implied. Although the
information provided is known to work on most systems, it may not work on ALL
systems. Make use of any
information supplied at your own risk.
The PC Gurus are a group of
volunteers who provide support for the PC, Mac and Linux users in the
Kentuckiana region.
To unsubscribe from this newsletter visit http://thepcgurus.com/mailman/listinfo/newsletter_thepcgurus.com or send an email to microdome@seidata.com with the words “unsubscribe newsletter” (without the quotes) at the top of the body of the message.